There are, it is well known, two difficulties connected with the proper manufacture of Tea, requiring at present the constant supervision of the superintendent: these are fermentation and firing. If the necessity of closely watching the latter can be dispensed with, it gives the superintendents more time to direct the fermentation, on which the colour of the infused leaf, and consequently the value, so greatly depends.
I have now considered all the Dryers I know of except Kinmond’s and Jackson’s. I have purposely left these to the last. While in the case of Rollers I thought Jackson had done best, in Dryers I most decidedly award the first place to Kinmond.
Jackson’s Dryer.—A long and exhaustive report upon it from Mr. Carter, of the Chandpore Garden, Chittagong, appears in the Tea Gazette, November 7, 1881. It is too long to insert here. No one can read it and doubt that the trials were most carefully conducted, and without bias of any kind. The results are not in favour of the machine. Moreover, were Jackson’s Dryers a real success I should have been aware of the fact long ago. I incline to the belief Mr. Jackson thinks he can do better, for he has lately brought out a Self-acting Tea Dryer regarding which the following appeared in the Tea Gazette:—
Jackson’s New Self-acting Tea Dryer.
Messrs. W. and J. Jackson have invented a new apparatus that will deal with the Tea itself throughout the drying process, and thus, they submit, secure a perfection in the dessication of the leaf not hitherto obtained. The objects arrived at by the new invention are as follows:—
1.—After the leaf is fed into the machine it requires no more attention until it is discharged dry.
2.—Every individual leaf is simultaneously exposed in precisely a similar manner to the action of the heated air, thus producing an unvaried and perfectly even dried leaf.
3.—The Tea is steadily but very slowly kept in motion, thereby dispensing with the tedious and tiring watchfulness of attendants, hitherto required in Tea drying on the tray system.
4.—There are no trays about the machine to handle, and it is, therefore, thoroughly durable and cannot get out of order.
In operating with the machine, a boy or attendant has simply to spread the leaf on a slowly moving feeding web or band, which carries it forward and places it in the machine, where it is steadily but inactively kept in motion, and in due course is discharged dry and crisp from a shoot at the delivery end; so long, therefore, as the attendant continues to supply the machine with leaf, it will steadily dry and discharge it, and should he have occasion to leave the machine at any time, no injury can take place to the leaf in the apparatus, as it must pass on and be discharged.